New En-Nep EDC with damascus

Had this piece of damascus lying around leftover from a knife I made some time ago for Drui (remember, CUTIE;-), when I used to give you complete knives? Those were ´em days...;-)), and I made this En - Nep from it some time ago and fitted a handle recently. The blade is 120 mm long and 2 mm thick. It has a selective temper that was a right challenge to do, for it warped this way, then the other and another still. I had to straighten it after quenching on a wooden block with a wooden hammer while tempering with the spine heat. I can tell you, I wished I had five hands;-)! Just a tiny bit of warping in the tip was left, and I ground this down with a water stone. It has a convex bevel, and it bites like your little sister, making it a great snack knife, yet it is way tougher than I expected, for I bend it 30° each way and it came out straight. I like it and have already a sheath in the making waiting to get tempered itself. Watch this place...

This is a knife that is certainly built at the limit of my personal ability, and I like that. It is funny that when you look at real tribal knives, they often tend to have very thin and slicey blades, even those made for hard backwoods work. The thickest spine of a tribal knife in my collection is that of a Syrian curved dagger, and this comes at 3,2 mm. A Touareg dagger I own measures just 1,8 mm, another even just 0,8 mm(!), a Turkish Zelim even comes at just 1,5 mm. Those are knives made for cutting, and this they do extremely well. And do not get me wrong, those knives certainly have seen some pounding in their lives, judging by the scars and nicks on the blade surface. And still their edges were in great working order.

The smiths that made them often have only marginal equipment. Often there´s just a hole in the ground for a forge, a plastic bag for a bellows and a lump of iron for an anvil. And yet, making knives like those that they make is a right challenge to me.

My respect to them!